Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Pre-Presidential address preparedness…

President Obama is going to speak to a joint session of Congress tonight at 7pm CST about health care reform.

This bitch, having been raised right (wink), shall watch this address as I have watched Presidential addresses since I was a wee bitch when my parents told me that wise people get their information directly from the source…and that listening to the President and agreeing with the President are two different things.

Cough.

This speech is the very definition of a big fucking deal.

The nation is divided…some on key policy issues and others about crazy ass bullshit.

Pause…consider…continue.

Yep, a list of needed things is in order!

The munchables…Chips…because crunching is good for my nerves.A tangy queso-esque dip…because flavor is a joy!Chocolate…because it works in celebration and to sooth the ravaged soul.

The beverages…Water…to hydrate.Vodka…’cause.Grape cran…’cause once again.Ginger ale…to add to vodka cran and make Sharktastic Sparkling Yummification if celebration of the public option is warranted (please, oh please…MERCY!)

The tools of bitchitude…A bitch’s TiVo has died.

I know…I got emotional over it too…but a new one has not arrived yet and this bitch is going to have to watch the telly knowing that I can’t pause or rewind (sob!).

The lay of the land…The partisans have been weighing in from jump, but a bitch overheard something this weekend that I think speaks to an under-covered factor impacting health care reform. I read an article about parents who intended to keep their chil’ren out of school rather than expose them to President Obama’s back-to-school message of staying in school and working hard. The thoughts of one father caught my attention – he said that America is the greatest nation in the world and he didn’t want his son to hear that there was something flawed about this nation.

Blink.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that shit and the more I thought of it the more it bothered me.

Could it be that some folks are resisting reform because they feel that embracing reform somehow tarnishes our national image?

Are there really folks out there who think that not acknowledging the fact that our health care system is failing is patriotic...that admitting that we have to fix something is admitting a weakness and that admitting a weakness is wrong?

Because, if that’s the case, then that shit is beyond fucked up!

But a bitch is beginning to think that may be the case for a lot of people…folks who have somehow become so married to their definition of American greatness that they can’t admit that we have a problem and work towards making America better.

This has happened before…in almost every social struggle this nation has faced. When segregation laws were struck down, the crowds gathered to angrily support the status quo…to resist change and frame it as socialist/communist/proposed by heathens and un-American…to intimidate policy makers and politicians…and ultimately to violently resist that change in their communities.

They too felt that reform was un-patriotic…

…and they were wrong.

One cannot fix a problem one does not acknowledge.

And walking around ignoring a fucked up thing is the opposite of great.

Sigh.

Anyhoo, a bitch will be thinking of that father and his fear that his son will know that America is not in a permanent state of perfection tonight…

…as I listen to the President make the case for health care reform once again.

7 comments:

Okay...what planet does he live on?! All you have to do is look around at your community...homelessness, crime, poverty...because in a perfect world, those things wouldn't exist. I think he was just trying to come of with a rational reason for his irrational behavior.

One of the first political quotations I ever heard was "My country right or wrong." It was used by the right to put an immediate stop to anti-war discussions. (Granted it was a different war and the discussions tended to be rather, shall we say, spirited.)

It wasn't until I was grown that I heard the rest of it:

My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

There is no greater patriotism possible than the willingness to dedicate oneself to setting one's country right.

Sorry about the loss of your Tivo. I can feel you pain. I go to other people's houses or even to the movies and have to stifle the urge to try to rewind.

As for that dumb Dad and his ilk, SMH. Don't they realize that everyone and everything has problems, faults, and things that can be improved upon? I mean, except for maybe God (who I'm sort of agnositc on), I've never heard of any idea concept or entity that was ever presented as perfect, so I don't know what that dude's problem is. Scary that he and folks like him are raising a child. They are giving thos children a very bad notion of what civic duty is and about having respect. I mean by the end of the last Administration, I could not look at the man, but I doubt I'd keep my hypothetical child home from school all day b/c of it. Shoot my Mom couldn't stand Reagan's butt but when he addressed school children when I was a wee one, guess whose black butt went to school that day? Never a discussion. As I often reminded myself during the last 8 years, you respect the office but you don't have to respect the man. Folks are losing their minds.

Unfortunately most of my fellow white people live such privileged, insulated lives that we don't know just how fucked up this country is. We live in hyper-segregated, white-washed, suburban communities, go to primarily white school districts, and consume merry-go-lucky, America-is-the-best-country-on-Earth media reports. It's easy to think that our country is near-perfect when you live in a community that appears to validate this worldview. Not to mention that our worldview is severely tilted towards the "praise America" slant at an early age because of our severely white-hetero-masculine educational curriculum. We are taught that racism and institutional oppression is but a thing of the past... something that ended in 1964. We fail to see the connections between the past and present, and how our cushy lives are implicated by centuries of genocidal oppression towards people of color, women, immigrants, homosexuals, etc. Lets let these people die off already and educate our future generations on the past and present evils of our nation... Only then will our youth be able to tackle the problems they will no doubt face as they age.

Wait a minute. Let's pause a little longer. I never considered for a moment that the perpetrators of this fuckery could have this kind of delusion.

Though, maybe I should have. During the campaign, a conservative commentator, Shelly Winters I think his name is, said that white southern conservatives were opposed to liberal ideas because they were raised to believe in the status quo. That if they were poor, that was there lot in life and to just accept it. That those in power were meant to be there. I'm paraphrasing, but that's what I took from the message at the time. Could that REALLY be the excuse for some? Let's close our eyes and ,as with all problems in this great country, it will fix itself?

I think that dad is the kind of parent that, when his kid is caught red-handed in the midst of foolishness, swears up and down that his kid is innocent, that there is nothing wrong with his kid, that the teacher is out to get him, etc. It is actually unthinkable to him that his kid could do something wrong.

Then there are the parents that want to know what happened. What went wrong and how can it be fixed. Because that way, everyone wins. The kid knows he can't get away with foolishness, the teacher knows the parent(s) are backing him up, the other kids in the class get a better environment to learn in, and the parent(s) get a kid that knows how to behave.

Oh, and a more perfect union. That means we're *supposed* to try to make it better. Anything less would be uncivilized! Massively unpatriotic, too.